Licentious
by SnickieFics
Summary: Unrestrained by law or general morality; lawless; immoral. Disregarding rules. A Code Lyoko magic-verse AU. A new type of magic is invented, but a psychic's predictions mean there will be war over the coveted power it could bring. Just how distorted will their reality become before one side prevails?
1. Demise and Continuation

**A|N:** Welcome to my newest brain-child. Well, actually it's not so new. But it hasn't been published in any form yet, so it's new to you guys. ¬¬ -shifty eyes- This is a magic-verse AU, a bit like Harry Potter but not really. I should probably just make it a crossover. But other than professors and classes maybe it wouldn't work. No matter.

I do plan to release this story in Spanish also, as soon as I can secure a good Spanish beta reader, and updates there will most certainly be slower than here.

Starting in July I plan to do massive writing and uploading to this story with a goal of at least 25 000 words in the month for XaJuWriMo, a writing challenge at XANA's Lair. In the meantime, while you people read (or don't read, that's fine too) and I write, reviews are especially encouraging. Even flames. Because they fuel my furnace where I took rice and toast marshmallows.

**Titles in this Establishment:**  
Headmaster - Principal  
Professor - teacher  
Monsieur / Madame - a faculty member who does not teach, for example, a nurse  
maestro (lowercase m) - a multi-dimensional being of magic  
sorceri - the plural form of sorceror/sorceress  
magi - the plural form of mage  
mage ≠ sorceror ≠ hedge wizard ≠ telekine; further definition of each will be explained as the story progresses.

**Disclaimers:** I am in no way affiliated with the makers of Code Lyoko, MoonScoop, or Antefilms. The universe is an alternate one constructed by my own twisted mind. Any similarity or resemblance of original characters and places to other people or places either in real life or in other published works are entirely coincidental.

**Rating:** T. There will be plenty of torture and adult themes and possibly even some language in this story, and I will probably change the rating to M at some point, depending on what my brain pours out into Microsoft Word. You have been warned.

**One last note:** If you look up the title of this fic, "Licentious," on Dictionary dot com, there will be three definitions. In the current context and foreseeable future of this fic, the first definition will not apply.

Without further ado, I give you the **Prologue**.

* * *

He was the only person in the Academy blessed with the ability to see the future without training to do so.

Even though it was considered the top level school in the world for magi, there were no instructors for training that ability in the field and very few people in the entire Academy with any aptitude for recognizing that type and level of ability.

Emilie LeDuc had noticed it first in her dream studies class when reading his theta waves revealed the answers to a metaphysics test that Professor Hertz hadn't written yet, and two days later the exact same questions and answers appeared on a pop test in that very class. He acted surprised when she confronted him before the test and utterly confused afterwards. He must've known it was coming because when she distorted reality to enter his dreams he had shown her images of kittens.

Aelita Schaeffer was the second to notice. She had helped Emilie in the distortion clause project and was nearly as intimate with it as Emilie was herself. But she had a distinct advantage in that she was able to alter mindsets the way one might replace the battery in a broken wall clock, and in that way she had convinced him to spill everything to her and Emilie.

As it turned out, not only did Odd Della Robbia have the ability to see the future; it was the only thing that was keeping him out of academic probation and what had gotten him into the Academy in the first place.

He knew all the answers to the tests before they were written, and since he heard the lectures before they were written he often doodled or slept in class instead of actually paying attention. His grades were abysmal, however; although he aced his tests, he struggled in his homework and had very poor writing skills. He only saw himself with grades no better than Cs and so he never put in the effort to make it better. And so, despite repeated offers to assist (and a bit of mind tampering to persuade him to accept) from Aelita and Laura Gauthier, his grades never improved.

The distortion project was the only thing he considered himself and his abilities good for. Apart from seeing the future and being resistant to some of Emilie's magic, he was relatively powerless. And so he dedicated his spare time to the distortion project: under Emilie's practicality and Aelita's creativity, he was a test subject and helped integrate future seeing into the new branch of magic. What's more, he was able to pass on his immunity to what was known as Hyde sorcery, or illusions (as what had originally been Emilie's strength), and some Jekyll magic, mind games (Aelita's strength), into the branch.

As the end of their third year approached, however, things began to change. Odd began having strange, sinister nightmares. They were so strange that Madame Drular, the headmistress of the dream department of Hyde sorcery, had reported them to the vice principal itself of the Academy. The vice principal was a strange being, a shapeshifter and maestro that called itself Xana, and its most common physical manifestation was that of a pale woman with short white hair and red-and-black clothing that belonged in a lingerie or theater costume store. Bringing any matter to Xana's attention was a big deal, and Odd spent many hours in questioning with... her. Him. Whatever Xana was.

"I can't tell her any of what I've seen," Odd told them one day in their treehouse quarters. Emilie was working on an application of detaching a soul and nerve impulses from a body with one of the test subjects, small bull terriers all codenamed Kiwi, while Aelita was reading into a neurology textbook she had smuggled from the restricted section of the Jekyll magic library.

"You haven't even told us what you've seen. And ever since the dream about the bridge nobody had been allowed to see your dreams except for Madame Drular and Xana," said Aelita.

"That's right," Emilie continued, failing again to detach Kiwi III's mental conscience from his body. "And nobody can use magic to force you to divulge because you're just too immune."

"That's why I can't tell anybody, not even on my own free will," Odd whispered. "I'm sure these visions are all caused by the distortion project."

"Well we can't figure out how to alter them if we don't know what we're doing to make it happen," Emilie pointed out as blue sparks announced another failed attempts. "Awgh, no, not again!" She threw her hands up before using them to pick up Kiwi III and return the whimpering dog to his crate. "I'll never get this! There's something missing to the right side of the equation... a soul won't be forced leave without a sure chance it can and will return to the body."

"Try again tomorrow, Emilie," Aelita reassured her.

"See, though?" Odd pointed out. "This is what I'm talking about. This project. Xana knows about it. I'm not sure how much, but she knows, and I'm sure she wants to use it to her advantage somehow. She knows I'm a part of it, and she wants what I know, and she'll do anything to get her hands on it."

"Well why should that be such a bad thing?" Aelita inquired, shutting the textbook. "We're making history here as the inventors of a new branch of magic, and still students ourselves!"

"You sounded like Laura just now," Emilie commented. Aelita glared at that.

"But... you guys. You don't understand. In my visions,... it was Xana, all her. Er, uh, him. Whatever. Xana was the source of all our misery. I can't tell anybody because nobody is as immune to divulgence as I am, not even you two." Odd sighed. "This is why she's locked me up in her office so much lately. She wants to know what makes me tick and why she's been in such a bad light in my dreams lately." He sighed again. "The worst part is Headmaster Schaeffer doesn't even know."

"What?" Aelita exclaimed, only to be shushed by Odd and Emilie. "How is that in the rulebook?" she continued, whispering now.

"Well you may have noticed that Xana doesn't always play by the rules," Odd responded grimly.

"Fortunately for us, neither does the distortion clause," Emilie stated confidently.

"That's just it, though," said Odd. "This distortion clause does follow rules. You just haven't made or discovered them yet. It doesn't matter how complicated you make it; it will be cracked someday, and Xana will be the one to crack it, and she'll do it through you," –he pointed directly at Emilie, "—and all hell will break loose."

Tension levels abruptly rised. Emilie looked suddenly mildly frightened.

"You're absolutely sure of this?" Aelita questioned slowly.

"You've known me long enough, Aelita," Odd whispered. "Have my visions ever been wrong?"

"Is the future really that set in stone?" Aelita cried out. Emilie shushed her again.

"If you can use the distortion clause to change the future, then please do. I can only do so much to limit what appears in my dreams, but they still come," the blond replied. "Beyond the bridge is fogged; I haven't seen anything that can tell me what'll happen after. So the bridge is a big event, and there's some element of chance. I know that future isn't set in stone, but what comes before it seems to be."

"Odd, we can't work on fixing or changing any of this when you're being so cryptic," Emilie sighed in frustration.

"I know." He nodded.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, broken only by the heavy breaths of the sleeping Kiwi III, before Odd spoke again.

"Maybe one day I'll find a way to relay what I've seen to you two without Xana being able to read it from you."

"We'd like that," Aelita nodded.

"Until then I can only leave you with this," he murmured, taking a piece of paper out from his pocket and unfolding it and handing it to Emilie.

_From trouble's way the soldiers came,  
The trumpets strongly blare,  
Their stride so confident as fame,  
Their leader unaware._

_Intentions plain and plans to mould  
He dared not hesitate.  
To find the card to make them fold  
He'd much appreciate._

_His target in plain sight ahead  
He sent a faithful scout  
To occupy her mind and head  
And find her secret out._

_Denial, hurt, the challenge met.  
Refused she to succumb.  
Away he took her, sorry pet,  
To force her to tell some._

_But strong was she who stood her ground  
Refused to divulge things  
Tortured, then escaped the pound  
To fly away on wings._

Emilie and Aelita read it over several times in silence as he watched. At a loss for anything else to say, Emilie commented:

"Odd... since when did you write poetry?"

The purple-clad blond blushed and smiled a little, before his serious demeanor returned.

"There's more, this doesn't cover the entire timeline as is. But I don't believe Xana will ever understand its true connotation, which is why I can let you read it."

"Odd..." Aelita whispered. "Is this the future?"

"A glimpse," he whispered back. "Early on is easier to see, but the further away from now we get the blurrier it gets. The bridge... was clear, but I don't know why."

"Because it's set in stone," Emilie whispered. "We may not know what exactly will happen, but these events and other unforeseen happenings will most definitely lead us to the bridge, and who knows how that will turn out."

"Apparently not even the psychic."

xXxXx

Heidi Klinger got wind of the distortion project when continued frustration on body and soul separation forced the original team of three to seek help. Laura Gauthier, the leading Hopper sorceress, was the first to volunteer her services, but Aelita and Odd both opted for Heidi Klinger, a Schaeffer mage, much to Laura's disdain and Emilie's skepticism.

However, it soon became clear that Heidi was the right choice. While they still weren't able to complete the body and soul separation formula, they were able to expand the distortion clause to include matter, which was a huge leap. With Heidi's understanding of electrical impulses and neurology, they were even able to develop a form of thought transfer through physical contact between two willing subjects.

By three-quarters through their fourth and final year at the Academy, there was so much of the distortion clause refined and ready for practical use that it could have stood as its own, small branch of magic were it not for the fact that it had to be kept a secret and the Confederation would have never approved of such new, officially untested, and potentially dangerous processes.

Odd's poem had increased in length and now talked about prisons and electricity and beaches of all things, and to go along with it was a stack of drawings of places. Unfortunately, he had been detained in the dream studies laboratory under Xana's orders, and after a dream involving high-rises and somehow dramatically reduced gravity, he wasn't even allowed to leave the lab except to use the restroom and to receive food and homework from his professors.

By this time, Emilie had acquired the ability to randomly see short segments of what was to come, but it was unreliable, and there was no way for her to control what was seen, or when it was seen, or when the event would happen. And as Odd disappeared completely from the distortion project team (and the rest of the Academy's student body)'s lives, there was no way to improve it. Emilie had the privilege one day to visit him, the two kept separated through an electric force field. And all he could tell her through mouth were of the horribleness of the nightmares. The way his voice sounded doubled and distorted, however, indicated clearly that he was definitely suffering some magical damage.

Emilie had the "honor" of carrying him, bridal style, to his final place of rest in the Academy's morgue, to be sealed away for eternity. It was announced by Madame Peraudin that Odd's nightmares had become so severe that they had literally made him braindead for all the stress it caused. They knew differently, of course, but all kept silent about the matter while the entire class mourned his death.

xXxXx

A week before graduation the final grade point averages were calculated. As predicted, Emilie was the salutatorian and Aelita the valedictorian. This meant she got to sit in the first row behind all of the Academy's faculty, and she had to give a speech. In consulting for her speech, Headmaster Schaeffer himself, a graying man, nearly blind and a direct descendant from the creator of Schaeffer Magic, had offered tips.

"You were good friends with Odd Della Robbia, were you not?" he inquired of her. "Perhaps you could give a short tribute to him on... hmm, perhaps how funny he was in class, or his artistic talent. Something that people will remember fondly about him."

"It's a good idea," Emilie replied quietly, but her pencil never met the paper with those thoughts on the formal outline.

"Is there something troubling you, Miss LeDuc?"

_Yes, yes there is. You're going to be brutally murdered._

"No, sir. I just... I guess I'm a little sleep deprived." Not a total lie.

"No worries. Take your time, Miss LeDuc. I'm sure it will be spectacular."

"Thanks, Headmaster," Emilie nodded. Headmaster Schaeffer nodded, stood up, and left the room, leaving Emilie to herself.

After a few minutes of her staring blankly at her equally blank paper, Aelita and Heidi entered the room. They took seats on either side of Emilie, Aelita to her right and Heidi to her left.

"I'm worried," Aelita spoke up.

"What about?" Emilie inquired.

"Our speeches for commencement. You know that the two of us are expected to present the results of our senior projects."

"Yes, and?"

"That means we have to communicate the results of the distortion project. And Xana will be there to hear all about it."

Emilie's head hit the desk. "Shit, no!"

"There there, Emilie," Heidi soothed.

"You don't get it, Heidi," Emilie replied. "Xana is a shapeshifting maestro. If she finds out just how deep we've gotten ourselves into with this and just how much information we're withholding from her she'll take it out on anyone who could get us to talk. Like your sister."

Heidi shut up at that.

"So what we need to figure out is how much information to reveal at the ceremony." Aelita's next words were a bit less businesslike. "Since you were the head of the project and the one who figured out the equation I've chosen not to make any mention of it in my speech."

"How nice," Emilie grunted, half gratefully and half sarcastically.

"So what then should be revealed?" Heidi wondered aloud.

"We'll talk later about it this week," Aelita answered. "I think we'll have to act like politicians on it, though."

"I really should make you in charge of the public relations committee here, Aelita," Emilie said, grinning.

"Why, so you don't have to do it yourself?" Aelita contested.

"Of course," Emilie smirked.

Eventually she did write her speech and submitted it to Madame Frateaux, the head of Hyde College of Sorcery, and to Headmaster Schaeffer for approval. It passed, to nobody's surprise. Emilie wrote almost as eloquently as Odd could draw.

xXxXx

Graduation day came, and it didn't seem like any time at all had passed between being returned her approved speech and when she was sat down in her chair in the row directly behind the Academy faculty. The auditorium was packed; attendance to graduation was mandatory for all students and if you were absent then you had better be dead or dying in Madame Peraudin's clinic. Since Madame Peraudin was seated two rows directly in front of Emilie, nobody could be sick tonight.

The auditorium itself was rather plain; the walls were a warm beige color, and so was the carpet. In front of the center wall was a long table where sat Headmaster Schaeffer, Xana (who had manifested itself today as the white-haired woman wearing a black robe with scarlet accessories; it was the most modest outfit she ever wore when taking on that body, and it was only worn at graduation), and the head of each College within the Academy. On the center wall was the logo for the Academy: three concentric circles (the second on a wreath) with four spokes sticking out from the outermost ring. Potted flowers and peace lilies tastefully decorated various corners of the stage. Finally, on the left side near the stage was a wood podium with the logo emblazoned on the front.

Emilie could see Professor Marlantes shifting in front of her as Xana began her speech. The man was the newest faculty member at the Academy, a practical instructor in intermediate restraint courses in the Hyde Sorcery College, and it seemed clear that he was not yet used to Xana's eloquent speeches.

Her eyes trailed over to the podium to where the white-haired woman herself was speaking. And to Emilie's wonder, her red eyes were directly on her. They were... mesmerizing. Emilie became confused: why was Xana using _that_ stare? Even more worrying was the unknown reason behind it. Perhaps she had never gotten what she wanted from Odd, and knowing Emilie's close companionship with him, she was her next target. Odd's words from eighteen months ago echoed in her head.

_Xana will crack it one day, and she'll do it through you. And then all hell will break loose._

And were suddenly gone, snatched away by the sudden silence that marked the end of Xana's speech.

The next noise to permeate the air was that of Headmaster Schaeffer, thanking Xana for her speech. Emilie swallowed as Aelita was called up to give her speech; the pinkette literally skipped down the aisle and up the stairs to join her father at the podium. Her speech was mercifully short, but somehow her natural bubbliness and enthusiasm couldn't shake Emilie's nervousness. Next to her as the number three graduate of the Academy, Laura sniffed bitterly.

Emilie swallowed again as she was called up to the stage to read her speech. Aelita passed her in the aisle and smiled reassuringly. Emilie grimaced before recomposing herself as she climbed up the steps and stepped behind the podium, nodding once to Xana, who was there to greet her. She set her paper down and stared out at the auditorium full of innocent faces. Some (mostly underclassmen) were blank as their minds wandered elsewhere until it was time for them or their friends to walk across the stage, others eagerly awaiting her speech for they knew of her academic prowess, and then there were her friends whose were encouraging and yet tainted with anticipation and worry. She cleared her throat and redirected her gaze to the paper in front of her.

"As some of you know, some students and I were involved in extensive research and development of what we hope will one day be its own branch of magic under the principle rule of what we call the distortion clause, an equation which allows access to cross-dimensional powers in the same types of magic. A good example of this would be between the mind and the body, and would allow for powers such as telekinesis without hand motions and perhaps one day even teleportation. And for all the help in development of this, I would like to thank my good friend Heidi Klinger, our valedictorian Aelita Schaeffer, and our late friend Odd Della Robbia. I also want to thank Headmaster Schaeffer for allocating resources and recommending Aelita to the project when I brought the idea to him nearly four years ago, and to my parents for helping us fund this project. Let's hear a round of applause for these wonderful people."

The auditorium slowly erupted into applause, first by the people who were actually listening and then by the students who had dozed off and had only started applauding because everyone else had. Emilie offered a smile towards the audience, and caught Aelita's eye. The pinkette was also smiling, but there was a trace of anxiety in her face. She looked back down at her paper, skimming the outline and bullet points, and realized there was no way this speech was going to do justice. The applause died down. She took a deep breath, and began to improvise.

"But enough about my project. I want to offer a special tribute to our late friend Odd Della Robbia." She paused for a moment to think about exactly what she wanted to say; while she was an excellent writer on paper her speech improvising skills were just less than average. "Odd wasn't very powerful using sorcery in and of itself, and he knew it and so did many of his professors. He was, however, very insightful, a psychic in fact and probably the only one in this Academy at the time, and on occasion had visions of what the future looked like, and I had the honor to know what he saw."

There was silence now as every ear in the auditorium pricked up to listen better. Odd was popular among the student populace, renowned for his jokes and pranks, and when he'd been taken away by Xana for "observation and treatment for his nightmares" there had been many students that had tried to help somehow, and there weren't many absent from his funeral.

"Odd had a vision for the future, one he, unfortunately for him, didn't foresee himself not being a part of. Most of his visions came to him in dreams, and it was through these dreams that Aelita and I found out he was a psychic. He foresaw great things, some of the people in this very room becoming very powerful. But he also saw dark things, of trouble." Emilie was silent for a few seconds, and decided to end it quickly. "But I do believe that whatever comes our way we will be able to overcome it with strength and dignity and friendship, and I have faith in all of you out there. You were a great class of students to know and work with, and now you'll be a great class of adults in the world."

She thanked the audience, bowed, and took her paper and left the stage to the sound of applause. Heidi noticed that Xana, on the contrary, looked less than pleased.

"That wasn't what you actually wrote, was it?" Aelita whispered as the next speech began.

"Of course not! What was on the paper was _much_ less cheesy and more informative than what I actually said onstage," Emilie whispered back.

"What you said was _less_ informative? I thought it was _more_! Xana didn't know Odd was a psychic, only that he had weird dreams involving future applications of the distortion clause."

"Are you two normally this contradictory of each other?" Laura whispered next to them. That got them to shut up.

They listened to speeches, they walked across the stage. They exchanged contact information and promised to relay results of their continued work at the project, and they went their separate ways into new lives.


	2. Kadic Academy

**A|N:** I will warn you ahead of time that this chapter is kind of _boring_. Nothing really happens. But it establishes one of the settings and includes some important information that will be referenced later in the story. I guess it's a bit of an information dump, so to speak. Whoops.

My intention from this point is to update this daily through the end of the month. I have a small buffer going, so as long as I keep up with the buffer I should be able to keep my word on this. Which is more than I can say for _Readon_. -oops-

**XaJu Wordcount:** The first 700 or so words were written before the official start date for XaJuWriMo. Thus we start off at 1304 words even though the chapter itself is 2004 words.

o0O0o

There's nothing wrong with going to a school coheaded by an evil mastermind for the purpose of learning everything they can teach so someone can one day teach and empower a resistance to overthrow the regime and threat of evil on the world.

At least, that's what Emilie kept telling herself as she drove down the two-lane road towards her new job. Her favorite band was playing on the radio, an unexpected treat since she had expected radio reception to be rather poor in this area. This school was out in the middle of nowhere. She had passed no other cars since she had turned on the road about forty-five minutes ago, and the only changes of scenery were the occasional appearance of guard rails when the slope on the side of the road became steeper and the appearance of different shapes of trees. Some were tall, some were twisted, some had slightly darker green leaves than the one next to it, but all in all they were trees.

Perhaps it was ironic that her destination was to be marked by a nearly impermeable patch of tall trees on the side of the road. Any normal person shouldn't be able to find it no matter how hard they tried, yet it seemed that whoever had chosen the location had decided that the difference between them and the surrounding trees were clearer than night and day. Emilie wanted to laugh, but she kept quiet, instead choosing to enjoy the complex rhythms of the song currently on the radio.

Kadic Junior-Senior Academy was a feeder school for Cortex Academy, the biggest rival school to Lyoko Academy. Heidi had been an exception, having chosen instead to attend Lyoko Academy, and now her younger sister Burniece was attending Kadic. It was rumored that Xana had a personal grudge against Heidi's family because of this, and so to Kadic Emilie went. It wasn't just a wage-earning job for her; it was a protection mission.

Emilie did laugh out loud when she arrived at the entrance to the school. Indeed the trees were much different here. The white bark and silvery shimmering coin-shaped leaves of aspen trees, which would've been mistaken for a rare species of birch by any unknowing person, stuck out from the darker oak and pine trees around them and surrounded a small gravel pullout on the side of the road. She parked and got out of the car and immediately caught sight of a wooden sign nailed to one side of the tree. The writing on it was faint yet legible.

_Kadic Junior-Senior Academy_

_Neither electronic devices nor vehicles shall be permitted beyond this point._

_Trespassing is prohibited. Heavy surveillance and lasers are in use._

Knowing already that the car would be transported to its holding location by the staff, Emilie began her hike through the trees, trying to remember the directions to where she was to go.

Kadic was a very strange school in terms of layout when compared to the schools normal folk attended. It was situated on several square miles of land, its classrooms spread out a long ways from each other and separated by trees and tunnels through mountains and mountainsides. Dormitories were essentially underground bunkers in caves deeper into the earth than the "hallways" that ran through the cliffs.

All of this, of course, was quite necessary, especially since the campus housed a junior academy. There weren't many things much more dangerous than a bunch of first-years trying out magic spells their older siblings had taught them. That was, unless you counted an angry, vengeful, evil, shapeshifting freelancer maestro, of course.

There was no check-in: they knew Emilie was coming, and she trusted that whatever security they had up would have been able to keep her out if she were not supposed to be there.

She exited one of the tunnels into yet another patch of trees, but thankfully this one ended quickly, and she found herself at the edge of a small valley that looked like it belonged in a desert. The mountainsides on the opposite side of the valley and most of the ground beyond the trees were covered in sparse, yellowed grass and small shrubs. And in the middle of this...desert... was a small building. A sign nearby declared this classroom was for second-years, and Emilie made her way to the door.

It was not much more than a screened-in porch. Three of the four walls were porch screening anchored on dark wooden posts, while the fourth wall was dark paneled wood with a black chalkboard nailed on it. There was room for maybe twelve desks to be squeezed in, but instead it was spacious, with only five student desks inside. One desk (and its student) was encased in a glass tube with about a foot of sick-looking green liquid.

The teacher in front of the blackboard was an older woman, with chin-length grey hair and thick, round glasses over dark green eyes. Her jaw was rather square, and the skin of her face was etched with wrinkles time had left behind. She wore a pale flowered blouse and a khaki skirt that went well past her knees. A set of dark brown pumps completed the ensemble.

The students themselves were just as interesting: a small red-headed girl in pigtails sat closest to the door. To her left was a Japanese boy who pulled off the long-haired look surprisingly well but could have used a haircut nonetheless. Behind him was a brown-haired boy, and next to him was a dark-skinned, dark-haired girl. The glass tube was furthest from the door, to the right (from Emilie's point of view) of the two boys, and in it was a blonde girl with Coke-bottle glasses. Emilie recognized her right away as Heidi's sister.

All eyes drew straight to Emilie, as if she had suddenly appeared from thin air, when she stepped inside the classroom, which she thought was strange because they should have been able to see her as soon as she had left the grove of trees.

"Ah, good, you're here, the teacher said at last. She not only looked old; she sounded old. "My name is Darlene Hoke. I trust you are the person they hired to be my teacher's assistant for the year." It was a sentence, but it sounded like a question.

"That's correct," the brunette replied, plastering a smile on her face that a flight attendant would be jealous of. "My name is Emilie Leduc."

"Ah, yes. I've looked over your résumé and I must say it shall be interesting at the very least to have you for our classroom assistant."

Six pairs of eyes continued to stay on Emilie as if they were pieces of iron and she was a powerful north-pole magnet. It was rather unnerving.

One pair of eyes left her as the teacher continued talking, this time addressing the class. "Class, this is my new teacher's assistant: Emilie. She comes from Lyoko Academy and is a certified illusionary sorceress."

"It's actually _the _Lyoko Academy," Emilie corrected, raising a finger to further make her point. "Vice Principal Xana was rather picky about using the proper article to address the school as."

A quiet hum of discussion filled the room as rumors and gossip began flying. From what Emilie could pick up, they were quite creative, even for them only being about eleven years old.

"That's enough, class," the teacher, Mrs. Kinsey, said to the class. They quieted down, and the day's work began.

o0O0o

It was a full month since Emilie had begun working at Kadic. And just as she said, things were going smoothly. No attacks had been brought to her attention and no threats had been made against the institution as of yet.

It wasn't, of course, without its hitches: the two boys were cold towards her. Hiroki Ishiyama, the Japanese boy, was because his older sister was a recent graduate of Cortex Academy, the rival school to the Lyoko Academy, and he felt a strong sense of loyalty to her despite how much he complained about her. Johnny Delcour, the brunette, was in it because he had a crush on Hiroki's sister.

Milly Solovieff, the redhead, and Tamiya Diop, the dark brunette, were adoring fangirls. When they weren't interrogating the older girl about all things magic and Lyoko, they were together, imagining things and writing scripts of what they would do once they were full-fledged magicians. Milly aspired to continue into mentality as a Jekyll mage while Tamiya had more interest in Hopper sorcery. Emilie found it amusing how they were so sure of their futures despite that neither of them had any psychic aptitude whatsoever.

Burniece Klinger, the glass tube girl, was neither. She wasn't cold towards her sister's friend because of school rivalries, yet neither did she indicate she had any reason to like her. It was as if Emilie's presence was simply tolerated, and the blonde wouldn't behave any differently if nobody were the classroom assistant. She was stiff in general, and the nasty green liquid she had to sit in all day probably did nothing to help that.

"Do you know anything about the green stuff they make her sit in?" Emilie once asked Heidi during one of their bi-weekly conference calls with Aelita.

"_No, I don't,_" Heidi had replied. "_I'm guessing it's some security measure. They haven't told you anything about it?_"

"No. I just know she has to sit in it all day and doesn't get to do as much practical stuff as everyone else."

"_Describe the stuff._"

"Well it has the consistency and transparency of copper II sulfate. It's the color of the cargo pants Ulrich wore all last year. Um... it usually comes halfway up her calves and somehow doesn't stain her clothes. And I have no idea what it smells like, but Burniece never looks happy to be sitting in it."

"_Doesn't sound familiar to me._"

"_Didn't you two learn anything in your applied chemistry classes?_" Aelita piped in. "_It sounds like a plasma mixture engineered to channel a certain kind of magic. What kind of magical trace does it give off?_"

"I beg your pardon?"

"_A trace,_" Aelita repeated. "_Any plasma mixture gives off a rather blatant trace of the magic it channels. Like a smell, or an abnormal chill or heat, or the feeling of your hairs standing on end._"

"Oh! It must be the smell then," Emilie replied, wanting to bang her head on the desk in front of her for being such an idiot. But the desk in front of her had a plate of food on it, so she had to settle for lightly smacking her forehead. "I think it smells like ammonia, now that I think about it. When she comes out of it, she smells like ammonia."

"_Poor girl._" Aelita audibly shuddered over the phone. "_For the smell, I mean. It doesn't sound familiar to me. Hold on, let me check with the expert._"

The "expert" was some freelance magician Aelita had met about a week after Emilie had begun work at Kadic, who was supposedly extremely powerful. Aelita never spoke of him in very much detail, and so the "expert" was a mystery.

"_He doesn't know either,_" she said after a minute or two.

"Oh well. Can't be that bad, anyway," Emilie surmised.

That evening, when the phone call was over and Emilie lay in her bed staring at the arched rock above her contemplating the green stuff, she couldn't help but wonder about the social predicament Burniece seemed to have. Why she hadn't put much thought into it before, she wasn't sure.

And in the midst of that, she found herself thinking about Odd. How would he have dealt with the situation? Would he even worry about Burniece and her mysterious glass tube? Would he have brought it up sooner?

Odd was no deity, but Emilie couldn't help but send some sort of prayer in his direction.

_Are we doing the right thing?_


	3. Hedge Expert

Terminology:

Hedge wizard: a magician who dabbles in traditional magic and sorcery; deemed "on the hedge" about which side to focus on

Freelancer: a magician who has learned and mastered both traditional magic and sorcery; in denotation it is synonymous with hedge wizard, but in connotation a freelancer is much more powerful

Maestro: a more powerful magician, marked by the ability to manifest the effects of their magic over long distances

**XaJu Wordcount:** 2559 (3863)

**AELITA**

In an old wooden house in a valley in a little-known mountain region near the region of Noel supposedly lived a genius. The valley was said to only be found by those who already knew where it was, and after many wrong turns (courtesy of hasty, illegible scrawl and water stains on the paper) on the maze of roads that went over the mountain, Aelita found herself standing in front of the house.

It appeared old and dilapidated, as if the owner neglected to care for it. The dark spruce wood appeared rotted or eaten by termites. The roof was missing several shingles, some of which were on the ground in the dead garden. The shutters on a few windows were barely hanging on to their hinges, and the glass was quite dirty. Aelita could see no lights inside, and from what she could see through the windows from the street she had no reason to believe there were any lights in there at all. In any typical horror movie or episode of Scooby Doo, this would've been an old haunted house that nobody would've dared go into, and it was difficult to believe that a powerful freelancer maestro lived here.

Supposedly he could further develop the distortion clause beyond what any of the rest of the team could imagine. And that was apparently why Waldo Schaeffer had recommended that she get into contact with him. After many unanswered phone calls and a lot of research, she had somehow managed to get a lock on where he lived. Whoever this guy was, Aelita hoped he would be worth the time and effort it took to even find him.

She swallowed hard and walked up the cracked sidewalk to the front door, the only thing that looked like it was maintained properly, and knocked.

It took all of six seconds for the door to open wide. The answerer's short blond hair was disheveled, as if he had rushed from what he had been doing to answer the door. His turtleneck and khakis, however, had been immaculately starched with not a single wrinkle in them.

"Good afternoon, sir," she said with a courteous smile. "Are you Jeremie Belpois?"

The blond could do no more than stare and stutter incoherently. "I... uh... I-I-I wow I..."

"A yes or no would be just fine, sir."

He continued to stutter for a few more seconds before shaking his head and nodding. "Yeah. Yes, I'm Jeremie Belpois." He reached his hand out to grab at Aelita's and shook it quickly, surely from a tangle of nervousness and excitement, with both hands. "Welcome! And may I ask who you are?"

Aelita chuckled at how he was tripping all over himself. It was clear to her that he was not accustomed to seeing women with pink hair at his front door. He probably wasn't accustomed to seeing many women at all at his front door. "My name is Aelita Schaeffer."

"Oh! Oh! I've heard of you! Waldo Schaeffer used to talk about you while I took lessons from him!" He looked positively delighted at that and seemed to have failed to notice that he was still shaking Aelita's hand.

"Oh really? I wasn't aware that my father was giving lessons to private students." At least now she knew how Waldo Schaeffer knew who he was or that he even existed. She was, however, beginning to doubt in his judgment when he had recommended him to her. If he couldn't even keep his house up on the outside, then how could she expect him to keep up his magic studies and practices?

"He's your father?!" By now he seemed to have been blown out of his mind. "I didn't know that! That's so cool!"

Aelita admired his enthusiasm and apparent fascination with her, but there was no time for that. There was business to discuss. He clearly wasn't accustomed to interacting with strangers at all, and she felt compelled to nudge him in the right direction. "What'd be cooler is if you'd stop shaking my hand long enough for us to go inside and discuss what I came here to discuss with you."

Okay, so maybe not a nudge. More like a hard push down a steep hill. He immediately blushed, clearly embarrassed, and let go of her hand. "Um, ah, yes, please do come in." He stepped aside from the doorway and extended his arm into the doorway to show her in.

Aelita's smile loosened a bit as she thanked him and stepped inside.

The inside of the house was nothing like the outside: it actually looked inhabitable and even homey. The entryway led straight into the living room which, other than the dark spruce wood paneling on the wall, was quite warm, with white ceilings and oak hardwood flooring. A leather sectional adorned the left wall and separated the space between the living room and the messy kitchen behind it, which lined the back left corner. The smell of baking bread filled the air, and Aelita immediately knew exactly what he had been doing before she'd arrived. There was a closed off section in the back right corner, which Aelita could only assume was the first floor powder room; the outer walls of it were decorated with shadowboxes in which were abstract artwork. The front right of the room had a table against the wall just under the window, on which were stacked several books, some open.

But what gave Aelita the most surprise were the windows. Unlike the shattered glass and the broken and closed shutters she had seen outside, the windows inside were perfectly clean, with not even a single crack or smudge.

As she took a seat on the couch and Jeremie ran back to the kitchen to fetch her a drink, she couldn't help but ask. "Do you... do you need help maintaining your curb appeal?"

"My what now?" came Jeremie's voice from the kitchen.

"The outside of your house," Aelita clarified.

"Oh, that!" Jeremie let out a chuckle. "That's not what it actually looks like."

"You mean the wreckage is all illusion?"

"You've seen what I'm wearing and the inside of my house, haven't you?" he pointed out as he came back with a tray with two goblets filled with iced water. "Do you think I would've let the front of my house actually look like that?"

"But how could you have done that? An illusion that convincing usually leaves you swimming in magic residue."

Jeremie chuckled and blushed again as he set down the tray in front of Aelita and took one of the goblets. "I've had a different magic education than you have. In Academies, they teach you magic with residue so that they can check your work not only to make it so they know you're doing it right, but also so they can keep you from becoming too powerful. When you learn on your own, you learn to do it with and without residue.

"Now think about it. I live here by myself in the middle of nowhere. And to those who aren't deterred by the location when they _do_ find it, I have to find a way to disguise my house without giving it away that it's disguised. Of course it has to look like it does! I do everything I can to not put myself out there because my kind, freelancers, self-taught ones especially, are considered dangerous by those in power, even those of us who have no interest in overthrowing people in power."

At this point Jeremie looked slightly exasperated, and it was Aelita's turn to look blown away. He saw her and his expression softened. "If you want, I can show you what it really looks like."

"You have an awful lot of trust in me," said Aelita, standing up to follow him.

They walked out to the iron gate in front of his house, and she turned around to stare at it. It looked the same as it had before, dilapidated and uninhabitable. And it stayed that way. She was about to open her mouth when he stepped behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders.

"I'm going to do this so that you can sense it." She could practically hear the grin in his voice. And before she could open her mouth to acknowledge him, his hands had left her shoulders and were now covering her eyes.

"Blink," he commanded.

She blinked, and still saw his hands, smooth but for the occasional paper cut. But now, where she had felt nothing worth mentioning before, she now felt like a glass dome was being lifted up from around her, if such a feeling could be described. Invisible energy pulsed from Jeremie's hands into her eyes for a brief second, and was gone.

"Blink again," he commanded.

She blinked, and suddenly his hands were gone, and in place of the dilapidated mess she had seen before was... well, it was definitely the same house with the same spruce wood and same window placement. But there were no missing shingles, no broken glass, no wood rot, no broken shutters. Soft light filtered through the windows. And the dead trees were replaced with quaking aspen, which shimmered in the slight breeze. It was impeccably clean, and Aelita suddenly understood the normals' saying "Don't judge a book by its cover" with a new depth.

"Impressive!" Aelita gasped. She gaped at it incredulously for a few seconds more. Then she blinked again and it was gone.

"Have you ever learned to do trigger magic?" Jeremie asked of her.

"Not the way you just did it." Aelita shook her head.

"Well then let's talk," he replied seriously, taking hold of her shoulders again and leading her back to the house.

Once inside, Aelita took her seat again and reached out for her glass on the coffee table. The ice had almost completely melted, but she didn't mind. She drank while Jeremie talked.

"Listen, Aelita. I've put no trust in you yet." His tone was low and deadly serious now. How he had gotten over his earlier anxiety so quickly was beyond Aelita but she listened anyway. "I know you're here for a reason, and I need you to tell me what that is."

Aelita sipped her water slowly as she contemplated him. He was a powerful freelancer. Probably a maestro too, though she hadn't seen him demonstrate any of that ability yet. He seemed to lean towards magedom since his outlet seemed to be his hands. And his _hands_... If they could do that with magic and her eyes, imagine what they could—

_No, Aelita. Concentrate._

His voice was making her loopy, she realized. But she couldn't bring herself to care. It was low and serious, and its slightly nasal quality was endearing. She wanted to turn into pink jelly on his couch and spill everything. She set down the glass and, despite how much she felt like falling forward into his skinny arms, managed to look him directly in the eye.

"I hope you have this place protected from shapeshifting maestros," she said.

He looked vaguely surprised, but nodded, shook one hand in the air briefly, and then continued to sit and watch her intently. Having regained her senses, Aelita sat up straight and talked.

"A few friends and I from the Lyoko Academy have been working on a new type of magic that revolves around a system of equations we call the distortion clause. It's cross-dimensional, if you understand what I mean."

"Please elaborate," he prompted.

"Most if not all magic up until we found this equation dabbled in either physicality _or_ mentality. The idea is that this system of equations can allow us to cross those two. For example, currently mentality magic is limited to powerful illusions that can be seen through if the person goes to touch something within the illusion and finds that it isn't really there and reading dreams. With this we'd be able to further enhance the illusions by remotely altering chemicals so that they actually feel what's in the illusion instead of just seeing it. It would also open the gateway to other powerful things. I imagine the normals' concepts of telekinesis and teleportation would be realized, and maybe even more."

"And what do you plan to do with this all?" he asked, his curiosity piqued.

"I... I'm not sure yet. You'd have to ask Emilie about it. She's the one who figured out the equation."

"Well at least you're honest," he murmured. "Aelita, do you realize what exactly you're doing? Creating magic... It's dangerous. I'm not sure how much success you've had with it, though it seems like you've had some. But when new magic is created, people want to be the first to learn and develop it to their own purposes."

"We've figured that out," said Aelita, staring down at the tray. "The vice principal at the Lyoko Academy, her name is Xana. She's a prime example."

"I know about Xana. She's been around for a while. It's not surprising," he nodded.

"Yes, but did you know she killed a student to try to get her hands on this?"

"No! She did that?!" If he had been standing up, he would have surely stumbled and fallen. But he was sitting, so he had to settle for leaning abnormally fast into the back of the couch. His blues eyes were wide with surprise.

"Yeah." She had not expected him to take that news quite as harshly as he did, but she saw no point in holding back. "We had a fourth person in on the project. Well, actually he was our third and we recruited Heidi later. But anyways. His name was Odd Della Robbia. He was a psychic. Like, a natural-born, all-seeing psychic. Xana knew he was involved in the project, and since he seemed the least secure against magic attacks, Xana took him custody. She tortured him. Emilie was allowed a visit once, and she told me about it. It was awful. He never broke mentally; it turned out he was immune to mental magicks coming in from other people. But he was vulnerable to physical magicks, so she ended up killing him. I don't know if it was intentional..."

"I've never heard of someone killing another person for the sake of learning a type of magic that the one who got killed knew," said Jeremie. "Xana sounds vile."

"She is. Even worse, she's a shapeshifter, and a maestro. I don't know what we're going to do about her," Aelita lamented. She picked up her goblet and drank the remainder of her water.

"So it's the distortion clause you wanted my help on, yes?" Jeremie said after a minute of silence.

"Yeah." Aelita nodded, setting the empty glass down. "But it seems I have some learning yet to do on magic fundamentals. And you are just as interested in the distortion clause as I am in improving my basic magic."

"Listen, Aelita." Jeremie sat up and cleared his throat. "I have knowledge you want. You have knowledge I want." A small grin spread across his face. "I think we can make this work."

"So it's a deal?"

"We'll work on it here." He smiled fully now. "It's been awhile since I've had some real company anyway."


	4. Disk

**A|N:** Woo! Stuff happens in this chapter. Also, I like reviews. They make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Even when they're flames, 'cause then I toast marshmallows in them and toasted marshmallows make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. XD –shameless begging-

Terminology:

Normal (noun): a person not capable of magic. Essentially the equivalent of a Muggle in the Harry Potter universe

XaJuWriMo word count: 2386 (6249)

**EMILIE**

"Have a nice holiday!" came the obligatorily cheery salutation as students, aides, and faculty alike prepared to leave the campus.

It was mid-October, and everything around now carried varying hues of yellow and orange as autumn claimed the scrubs and deciduous trees around the campus. A chilly breeze blew from the north: a clear signal that winter was coming. Extra cardigans and thin hats had already been brought down from students' attics as early morning temperatures dropped from mid-sixties F to high fifties, and it wouldn't stop there.

Fall midterms had just taken place, and it was time for a weeklong break at home. And that's where Emilie was headed: south to the low flatlands dotted with different trees and higher temperatures and humidity levels. To her home where oak and maple and flowering crape myrtle trees lined the streets, and where the occasional ligustrum and camphor trees could be seen, never turning or shedding, always shading. Due to the closer proximity to the equator, even the maple trees would still be green at this time of the year.

In truth, she hadn't been there since she had gone off to the Lyoko Academy four years ago; over the summer she had stayed in Aelita's apartment as they all prepared for their new tasks and tried to get in more study and practical application out of the distortion clause, all without alerting the normal neighbors to the presence of magicians nearby.

In fact, the original plan was to spend this week with Aelita and Heidi to personally discuss happenings and progress from each end. But Aelita had chosen to stay with Jeremie for whatever reason. "Jeremie doesn't follow the same school year calendar that you do, so our breaks don't coincide," she had said. "I'll try to see you in January though."

And so it was home Emilie found herself after a seven-hour drive. It was seven in the evening and eighty-three degrees, and she welcomed the heat and humidity. Gas was cheaper, and she welcomed the wiggle room in her budget. Food came from the box garden her mother had in the backyard, and she welcomed the Swiss chard and zucchini as a change from bitter flat-leaf kale and acorn squash which were just being harvested further north.

Heidi had managed to be able to meet her there, at least, which was good. The LeDuc family liked the young blonde, so it was no hassle. On top of that, they'd be able to get a little bit of work done even without Aelita's presence.

It was Tuesday night when came the strange robot creature... thing.

Emilie was standing in her neighbor's driveway talking to an old friend, Claire Girard, while Heidi was inside on the phone with Burniece. Claire was a normal, but her family had no problem with living on a street full of magicians, and so nobody bothered to keep magic a secret around them. They were recounting and comparing their experiences in post-secondary education: Claire at University, Emilie at the Lyoko Academy.

The brunette was recounting her least favorite class, metaphysics by Professor Hertz, when suddenly Claire pointed behind her. "Hey! What's that?"

Emilie turned to see a red spinning disk in the air steadily coming their way from the general direction of her house. "That looks like a toy robot thing I had when I was little," she commented. "You sure Ninon doesn't have one like it?" Ninon was Claire's little sister.

"I'm sure," Claire replied. "Ninon's inside anyways."

"Then maybe it's another neighbor's. Didn't you say a new set moved in not too long ago? It's probably nothing to worry about," Emilie murmured, turning her attention back to Claire. "So where were we? Oh yeah. So she hands us this paper with—hey!"

Whatever Emilie was about to say was cut off and forgotten as the disk settled on top of her head, suddenly sprouted four mechanical legs with pointed tips, and stabbed each leg into her temples and neck as if trying to get a good hold. A cyan-tinted white light shone from underneath it over her head. She reached up to grab at the disk to try to pull it off of her, but shrieked as she felt her feet lose contact with the concrete beneath them.

Claire, unsure of what to do, let out a shriek also. She made chase as Emilie's feet hovered half a meter above the ground and carried her purposefully away from the driveway and into the street. Claire, a former track star, caught up rather quickly, and the combined efforts of Emilie pushing away at the disk's legs in her neck and Claire pulling her down, they were able to break the control the disk had, and the brunette plopped to the ground.

It wasn't finished with her yet, though. The disk came back and took a firmer hold, this time all in her neck. Emilie was sure it was going to make indentations if they didn't puncture her, and she wondered briefly how they had missed her jugular. The light came back on her head, and, despite kicking and trying desperately to get the thing to drop her, it drug her down the street.

Claire disappeared when it came back the second time, and reappeared a few seconds later, a tennis racket in hand. To hers and Emilie's shock, the disk turned, without breaking its speed or altering direction, so that Emilie was facing Claire, and it fired off several light orange-ish lasers like bullets. Claire batted them away somehow with the racket. Then she leapt in to the air and brought down the piece of sports equipment on the disk. It fell to the ground, leaving Emilie to face a rough landing in the road, and from there it was stabbed until it showed no more signs of moving. She dropped the now ruined tennis racket.

"Emilie, are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah..." the brunette replied, rubbing her temple and her neck where the legs had held on to her before putting herself back on her feet. "What the heck _was_ that?" she asked, not really expecting an informative answer, as she prodded the small robot with the toe of her shoe.

"I have no idea," Claire replied.

"Well anyway, it doesn't look like it'll be trying to carry me away again anytime soon," Emilie said after a few seconds, bending down to pick up the red metal. Her eyes widened as she inspected the top of it, but she said nothing to Claire. "I should get home. Heidi's probably waiting for me."

"You sure you'll be okay?" the redhead asked. "You're bleeding."

"Am I?" Emilie laid a finger on the spots on her neck, stopping at one of the spots on the back of her neck. Her hand came away and sure enough her fingers had a light coating of blood. "It's nothing," she said, wiping it on her red shirt. "I'll put some peroxide on it or something when I get home."

"Well okay. Tell Heidi I said hi."

"I will." Emilie walked back down the road to her house and let herself in. Mrs. LeDuc, a normal, waved at her cheerfully, and the young brunette was grateful for her long hair and general obliviousness to robot technology. It prevented the woman from asking questions that Emilie really did not want to answer right now.

Heidi was still on the phone, so she went straight to the bathroom and locked herself in. Taking a handheld mirror, she parted her hair and angled the reflective glass in relation to the mirror on the wall so she could see her neck. The wound was small and circular, with a small stream of blood running down from it, and as she twisted her neck to get a better look at it she realized just how sore it was going to be in the morning: the adrenaline from the attack was wearing off and it was starting to really hurt now. Emilie cursed herself for not taking any courses on healing magic while in Lyoko.

"Okay. I'll see you on Sunday. Love you! ... Bye!"

Hearing that Heidi was now off the phone, Emilie came out of the bathroom, her hand over the spot on her neck.

"Oh hey, Emilie!" The blonde smiled brightly. "How are Claire and Ninon?"

"They're fine," Emilie replied with equal false cheeriness. Then her voice lowered and her demeanor became serious. "I need you to take a look at something."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Come on." The two girls went into the bathroom, shutting the door, and Emilie gestured to the red broken robot disk on the counter. "This attacked me while I was talking to Claire outside. It like... picked me up by the head and tried to drag me down the street. Claire smashed it and it seemed to stop it."

"I've seen these!" Heidi said. "It's a miniature Krabe. Some Hopper sorceri manufacture and program them at the Lyoko Academy." She gasped. "You don't think they could have sicced one of these out on you, do you?"

"Someone had to have sicced it on me, and if the Lyoko Academy is the only place to get them then it's probably someone from there. Anyway, look what it did to my neck." Emilie shifted her hair to reveal the spot.

"Ooh, that's nasty," Heidi observed. She looked down again at the Krabe, and down at its legs. "They're pointed! That's an upgrade from the last ones I saw."

"Can you heal it?"

"Of course I can. Just give me a sec." Heidi leaned in to inspect the wound more closely, and pressed the heel of her palm to it. A cold sensation, like frigid water droplets, ran into the wound, and Heidi withdrew her hand. Emilie's skin was regenerating, and it would be a matter of minutes before all that would be left was a light pink scar.

It was too unfortunate that neither Heidi nor her magic detected the chip that was now buried underneath layers of new skin.

"Thanks, Heidi," Emilie breathed, fighting the urge to poke at the freezing spot.

"You're going to have to inform the Kadic administration of this, you know," Heidi pointed out. "Krabes are programmed to follow DNA residues, and there won't always be someone there with a tennis racket to knock it down."

"Yeah, I know." The brunette cringed at the thought. It would be awful to be in the middle of a lesson and suddenly be whisked away by one of those awful disks.

o0O0o

"Would you repeat that for me, Miss LeDuc?"

It was Sunday, a day earlier than she should have been back, and Emilie now stood in front of Jean-Pierre Delmas, Kadic's headmaster.

"Yes, headmaster. A red disk, called a Krabe, tried to kidnap me over the break. It failed, but that doesn't mean they won't send out another one to try again. Krabes are programmed to follow DNA trails, and so, even here at the academy, I'm at risk. And my being at risk puts the students at risk. All of them.

"I'm not asking for a leave; I'm asking for extra security measures so that, if we do see one, we can deal with it without putting students in extra harm's way."

"Very well. I'll bring it up with Mrs. Kinsey and Mr. Morales." Mr. Delmas shuffled some papers on his desk. "Er... would you happen to know why the Lyoko Academy is sending out Krabes after you?"

"No sir," replied the brunette. "Ideally they should just send me a letter or phone call and I would go there myself, but if they're sending out Krabes then it probably isn't good news."

"I see." He shuffled a few more papers before picking up a handheld radio. "Mr. Morales?"

"_Yes, sir?_" came the reply, staticky from the interference of tons of rock above and around them.

"I need to see you in my office please."

"_Ten four._"

Mr. Delmas set down the walkie-talkie and directed his attention back at Emilie. "Would you wait just outside my office please?"

"Of course, sir."

So to the waiting room Emilie went. A minute or two later, an overweight man in a red jogging suit passed by her and went into the office. Emilie sat in silence for a few minutes more, and then the door opened and the red-jogging-suit man motioned for her to come inside. So she got up and went in. Nicole Weber, the blonde secretary, followed her in as a witness and an extra female.

"Miss LeDuc, I'd like you to meet Mister Morales," Mr. Delmas began once they were settled in.

"Call me Jim," said Mr. Morales.

"He's our security technician here at the Academy, and he's going to help us protect you against the Krabes you described," Mr. Delmas continued.

"I understand you need a mask for your DNA trail," said Jim.

"That is correct, sir," Emilie confirmed. "Though if you can, I'd also like to see some sort of anti-laser force field as well. The Krabe I was attacked by had a laser equipped on it."

"Okay, the first I can do easily," Jim said. "The force field, however, is a tall order. The size of this campus along with the fact that I'm not an efficient maestro make it impossible to protect the entire campus."

"What about just a specific part? Could you cover the junior side of campus?"

"Possibly, though it'd be easier to just cover the senior side since they're in closer proximity with each other."

"But they're also better trained," Mr. Delmas pointed out. "However much of the junior side you can cover will have to suffice."

"Then that's what we'll do," said Jim. "Now, as for the DNA masking, that'll have to be done twice daily to keep it in full working order."

"Go ahead," Emilie said. "We ought to build it up as much as we can before tomorrow."

Jim nodded and became motionless momentarily as he concentrated, and Emilie could feel her skin tingling everywhere, the trace Jim's masking sorcery would leave. Emilie reminded herself to learn that particular spell as soon as possible.

Several minutes later it was over, and Emilie was gratefully dismissed to her bunker to prepare for the coming weeks.


End file.
